Tag: RCA

Problem Management Process Design – Part 3

This post is the third and the final installment of the series for designing a problem management (PM) process for your organization. Previously we discussed the elements and considerations that should go into designing a problem management process. We elaborated those considerations further with a sample list of process requirements, a sample process flow, and a sample RCA form. We will assemble all the information together into one process design document that can be used to implement the process.

Problem Management Process Design Example

In addition to the process requirements and the process flow, I believe a process design document should call out the following information pertinent to the implementation of the process. For example…

  • The Policy section outlines what policy statements (IT or corporate) governs the process and what expectations the organization wants to set for the process.
  • The Scope section specifies which incidents or events will generate a problem record. Your organization may have a pre-defined set of criteria on how problems are triggered, and those criteria can go into this section. Some organizations may also choose to group a series of closely related incidents and trigger a problem record for those incidents.
  • The Roles and Responsibilities section outlines the roles that will be involved in the process and their corresponding activities and responsibilities.
  • The Artifacts and Communication section describes what documentation methods will be utilized by the PM process. It provides the procedural information necessary to carry out the PM process. The communication protocols section describes the recommended communication methods and their frequencies.
  • The SLA and Metrics section describes the metrics that will be used to measure the process performance. The tutorial document has outlined some examples. Develop and measure the metrics that you can capture reliably and that your organization also cares about.

To reiterate, the primary goal of the Problem Management process is to identify the problems in the IT environment, so we can eliminate them by performing root cause analysis on the problems. As a capable IT organization, we should be able to correctly diagnose the root causes of just about everything that goes wrong within our IT environment and to implement solutions so similar problems or incidents will not reoccur. With proper documentation, the Problem Management database is a great learning tool. Also, another benefit of having a well-run problem management process is having the ability to review organizational decisions made about addressing a particular problem. Known errors do not need to be purely technical. They could also be the documented decisions about how we plan to address certain problems. The root causes, solutions (proposed or implemented) and the workarounds documented as part of the Problem Management process will benefit the Incident Management process immensely when similar incidents surface due to the recurrence of a problem.

I hope the information presented so far has been helpful. Please feel free to suggest options or other approaches that have worked for your organization.

Problem Management Process Design – Part 2

This post is part two of a series where we discuss the Problem Management process and how to put one together. In the previous post, I presented some design elements for consideration. In this follow-up post, I will illustrate the design activities further with the following, additional elements.

Problem Management Process Requirements

Problem Management Process Flow

Problem Management RCA Form

The first document contains a list of sample process requirements. The purpose of the requirement document is to capture all considerations that need to be factored into the process design. You will need to decide what activities or requirements will be considered a critical part of the Problem Management process. For example, if row #12 “Categorize the root causes to facilitate further analysis” is important to your organization, make sure that particular requirement is documented, so your process design will incorporate a method of categorizing the root causes.

What can you do if you need some extra help on knowing what to look for in designing your Problem Management process? I would suggest using the following documents as your starting point:

  • ITIL: Problem Management in the Service Operation manual, section 4.4.
  • COBIT 5: Enabling process DSS03 – Manage Problems
  • ISO/IEC 20000: Problem Management in Section 8.2

By using ISO/IEC 20000 as the base, I have derived some sample requirements for your reference. As you can see from the document, the sample requirements outlined in the document are pretty rudimentary and generic. You need to tailor your version of the document with the actual requirements from your organization. Do not select a particular requirement just because it looks good on paper or in theory. Craft or select the requirements to include in your process design only when they make sense for your organization. Also, if you plan to implement a tool or have an existing tool that will be used to support the Problem Management process, the tool-specific considerations should be captured in the requirement document as well.

The second document contains a sample process flow. The process flow shows who is doing what and during what stage of the Problem Management process. Once you have determined what your requirements are for the process, the process flow attempts to match and support the process requirements.

The third document is a sample data entry form for the root cause analysis exercise. The form illustrates what data you may want to captured with the process, and they should be consistent with the requirements you have captured from working with your organization. The data you want to capture from the process should also be consistent with the support from the tools you plan to use with the process. Normally, we don’t want to have the tool’s capability drive the process design decisions. If you have an existing ITSM tool that you would like to use for the Problem Management process, now it is the time to factor the tools into the design and make sure the design can be supported by the tools.

In part three of the post, we will combine everything we have done and produce one final process design document. The process design document will include not only the requirements, the flow, and the roles, but also other information pertinent to the process such as the policy statement, a RACI chart, and the process metrics. The final process design document can then be used as the foundation to implement the actual Problem Management process within your organization.